The present invention relates to a hinge for pieces of furniture with deactivatable deceleration device. More specifically, the invention relates to a hinge for pieces of furniture with a special deceleration device that makes it possible to be activated or at least partially deactivated according to the requirements of the user.
As is known, in the furniture sector, in order to support in an oscillating manner the door leaves of pieces of furniture, usually hinges are used that comprise a fixed part which can be connected to the body of the piece of furniture and a moveable part, constituted by a box, which can be connected to the door leaf, such parts being mutually articulated by way of a system of articulation that comprises connecting oscillating rockers.
In order to maintain the door leaf in the closed position, the hinges further comprise adapted elastic means, for example in the form of a V-shaped leaf spring which is loaded to push the arm of the fixed part, or the system of articulation, in the direction of closure of the hinge.
In order to decelerate the closing movement of the hinge imparted by the aforementioned elastic means, a deceleration device can be provided, for example of the fluid-operated linear type or the grease-operated rotary type.
Such deceleration device is particularly useful because it anticipates that the user can, by closing the door leaf with a brusque movement, cause a forceful impact of the door leaf against the structure of the piece of furniture, with consequent unwanted noise as well as potential damage to the door leaf proper.
EP1809843 and WO2011/160889 disclose deceleration devices of the rotary type, in particular WO2011/160889 discloses a deceleration device of the grease-operated rotary type, which, in the form of an assembly, can be assembled in a straightforward manner on an outer side of the bottom side walls of the hinge box. Such device has a deceleration disk which is actuatable by way of a slideable actuation element and a cam which is integral with one of the oscillating rockers of the hinge.
Furthermore, conventional deceleration devices can be optionally provided with means of deactivation of the deceleration function, so as to allow the installer and/or user to set how many of the hinges arranged on each door leaf have to be made to operate in decelerated mode, so as to optimize the closing movement of the door leaf, as a function of the weight and of the size characteristics of that door leaf.
Such deactivation means are for example disclosed in WO2009/124332 and comprise a locking element which is controllable manually or by way of a tool in order to lock the element (oscillating, in this case) for actuating the deceleration device at the end of the deceleration travel, so as to prevent the deceleration device from rearming, therefore deactivating the operation thereof.
However, a solution like the one proposed above is not applicable to hinges of the type illustrated in EP1809843 or in WO2011/160889, in that the slideable actuation element, being moveable integrally with the rocker of the hinge by way of the cam, cannot be locked in a stroke limit position.